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AI has no place in the music world. Great video, Danny.

I'm glad to know I'm not alone

I always feel a bit morbid, thinking about getting older. I've never once spoken about "Well, at my age..." or "I'm getting old.." But the simple fact is that we are normally surrounded by people of a similar age. We lose friends, family and heroes more frequently. We moved to France around 12 years ago to escape the roundabout of this 'living to work' etc. The pace of life has kept my heart rate down and helped with the arthritis..! I've been playing regular gigs all that time. The 'escape' of being with fellow musicians and making people happy enough to kick their shoes off and dance to something I was helping to create is the only drug I need. A few months ago another big change to our lives. We bought a live-aboard motor home to tour Europe and we're about to buy a house in the country. First time we've owned our house since leaving the UK. I'm 73 and friends have raised their eyebrows when we've told them what we're up to. Expected us to sit in front of the telly probably. I could talk about losing friends as well. The very thought of losing my wife scares the freaking hell out of me. How others cope, I just don't know. Life ain't a bloody rehearsal...

Thanks Rosie that reminds me. One use for these LED strips which I've exploited is to fix them to the speaker stands or even just place them in front of the stand. If it's out in the audience area they are really quite bright and it keeps the audience away from the stand avoiding the trip hazard of the stand itself and protecting the speaker from drunks. Oh the joys of gigging tiny pubs

Yeah seen this one also. Another lovely looking thing- guys got taste for sure and dough

@Phil Starr Thanks for this. I'll work out how to mount the grill a few mm back from edges of the speaker cabinet. I should be able to get 15mm from the very front of the speaker to the grill. That's around 21mm from the cone. I'll look around for 10mm perforated aluminum and some acid etching primer.

Got one of these from Screwfix and its an amazing bit of kit. I strapped a car mat to the base to stop scratching the bottom of my Mesa cabs. It still folds up ok with the mat on it. Dave

Yes you can see the culture clash between cosmopolitan LA and Yorkshire! Mohini published a somewhat hurt response to him last night as well. She does have a good point RE AI being a tool that we need to get used to (and work out the best way to use), but possibly needs to also get a sense of humour as Danny does have a point about pretentiousness (albeit I agree with Danny that she is one of the most talented bass players on the planet - so maybe we can forgive her!).

Grille for the BassChat 8 Somebody, I can't remember who, used one of the round grilles for an 18" speaker and hammered it flat, I copied that idea for my cab it's a great way of buying just enough perforated metal to do the job and is purpose designed. it even comes in black £6 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/126150460308

I like a compressed direct sound, but most drive pedals were built with a cab in mind and without they sound like shit. So in my helix when I have a no cab tone for clean when I hit a drive pedal it turns on a cab sim as well. And often an EQ adjustment with a view to making it sound like an overdriven version of the original tone.

My main pedalboard requirements are.. Pre-amp for D.I ( IEM’s with no backline, so quite important, EQ is generally taken care of with the East preamp in my bass) Compression Overdrive Chorus Octaver

I’m looking to essentially ‘pinstripe’ my bass as I really like the look of binding on guitars, and In a bit of homage to Jared Followill old pinstriped T’Birds… Can anyone with experience in panting basses recommend a paint type for this and a brush over gloss. My main worry is it would just rub off where my arm falls. I’ve done a ChatGPT mock up to demonstrate what I’m looking for. But it would just be a single line around the edge of the body/headstock/pickup surround/ pick guard and I wouldn’t be actually binding the neck😅 Thanks Alex

I don't get that at all. Sounds more like your band are too good to open for them and would show them up. Dave

Any sort of obstruction in front of the speaker affects the sound and if you listen to music then there is an audible difference when you remove the grille. Most Hi-fi buffs will remove them for critical listening and you never see them on studio monitors. However practicality reigns and bare paper cones would last minutes in most gigs never mind rattling around in the back of the van. Quite apart from the resistance to air movement the holes each act as diffraction points and a metal grilla as a diffraction grating. The hole size is important as is the ratio of open space. The effect is most evident at high frequencies and is clearly audible. I look for holes that are as big as possible whilst keeping anything as big as a pencil out. I'd avoid anything with more than 40% of the area covered so not all perforated metal sheet is suitable. Fortunately there isn't much high frequency coming from a bass speaker and so the sound isn't too badly distorted by the grille. Most commercial grilles will be OK so have a look at what the manufacturers do and you should be OK. However I do look at some cabs and wonder if style over substance isn't creeping in. You really don't need to put the badge in front of the cone.

Gat Decor is a classic, I remember when it came out, good fun to play I imagine

Used to be more but we now have a permanent PA guy to do all the heavy stuff and we split our fee 6 ways now but it means i'm not lifting all the heavy PA cabs in and out my car for every gig. He turns up in his van and does it all. Sounds better out front too. Lot more professional looking too having your own SE. Dave.

I quite like him, with his funny northern ways...

Cyndi Lauper quite often does a stripped back version of her own 'Time After Time'...

I recently got a new keyboard so have have been re-visiting some Piano and Organ House classics like these to try and play:

Really enjoy these kinda build videos! His bass collection must be quite something.

All our stuff is now acoustic based and done at a slower tempo than the original. You know the sort of thing..! Songs that go down really well for us on a Sunday afternoon vibe... Heroes... DB Poison... AC Dancing in the Dark and I'm on Fire... BS Hymn to Her... Pretenders And surprisingly, a Creep/Air That I Breathe medley is very popular Avoid the album lyrics of Creep, especially on a Sunday.!

One of the speakers parameters is Xmax which is the furthest the coil can move and stay within the magnetic field. Like a lot of these things which determine maximum power there are slightly different ways of measuring this but that's a technical thing which isn't really relevant to the cab builder. Basically Xmax is the furthest the coil and cone can move and beyond this point the speaker will start to distort and the coil will begin to overheat as it is outside the magnet which also acts as a chunky metal heatsink. Xmax is 5.5mm for the Fane 8-225 so that means the cone will move 5.5mm forward and 5.5mm back or 11mm in total at full power. so, 6mm clearance for the grille is needed. If you look carefull at the speaker you'll so that the cone is set back from the gasket and the frame by a few mm, roughly speaking the cone sits level with the front of the baffle so if the grille clears the speaker frame by 3mm you'll havbe your 5.5mm clearance. In practice you can allow a little more and 10mm in front of the baffle is what I would use as a minimum. Metal grilles get bent in use and pushed inwards so 12-15mm is my usual clearance. Oh I've just spotted David's @Mottlefeeder post. All he says is true. Some manufacturers do give figures like Xlim or even Xdamage to indicate the extreme excursion point. Fane don't give this figure for the 8-225 in their current spec sheet. 10-15mm clearance of the front of the baffle will be enough.